This report is focused around Lost and Found data using the intakes and outcomes data received for 2019-2021. Its goal is to reflect everything we could learn about L&F from the available data, make sure the numbers we see make sense, and highlight things that would be useful to show but some/all data required for them are missing.

Date range: 2019-01-01 to 2021-11-30

Report Structure

  1. KPIs: data points that indicate how good the shelter is doing on on L&F. They have numeric goals associated with them.
  2. Supporting data: data points that aren’t a goal themselves but serve as a proxy for improving a goal. For example, the method of RTH is not a performance indicator, but it helps identifying how RTHs take place. The number of strays found per ZIP code is not a metric to improve, but it shows where most strays are coming from to guide resource allocation.
  3. Data notes: the state of the data received from the shelter.
  4. Extra metrics: some ideas for additional L&F metrics and the data points they require.

Scroll down or use the table of contents on the left to navigate throughout the document. Most sections contain multiple tabs showing different facets of a data type. Most plots are interactive, meaning they include tooltips and allow hiding and showing parts and zooming in and out. If something went wrong, look for the house icon in the top right corner of each figure to reset.

KPIs

Yearly RTH Rates by Species

This table covers all strays and RTHs. RTH rates shown below are the number of strays with RTO outcome out of all strays.

When we go over this, let’s make sure we calculate the rate the same way you do, so we would want to make sure what we see makes sense. If these numbers are right, they are higher than the HASS averages, which are at 30% RTH rate for dogs and 2% for cats, and have been stable since 2019.

Normally, we would then split these by RTH method between RTO in the field and in the shelter, but since this has not been documented at PetPoint this is left out.

Species Year Strays RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat 2019 1034 31 0.03
Cat 2020 500 18 0.04
Cat 2021 457 21 0.05
Dog 2019 1032 296 0.29
Dog 2020 795 296 0.37
Dog 2021 628 263 0.42

RTH Over Time

These three time series show the RTH rate per month, to show whether there were times with particularly high or low rates as well as the overall trajectory. These figures show only dogs information because there were only 8 RTH cats in 2021.

It seems like the rate has been constantly improving since 2019, jumping up with the beginning of the pandemic.

Stray Intakes

This section shows the number of stray intakes over time, as well as the breakdown of strays by field/shelter intake. This helps give us some context to the above pattern – at least part of the RTH improvement might have come from the lower intake volume.

Stray Intakes by Month

Dog numbers are pretty steady, suggesting that the differences in RTH rates between months are not a result of differences in intake volume.

Stray Intake Subtypes

This helps us to understand where strays come from, which in this case seems exclusively animal control (as opposed to public drop offs).

Length of Stay Differences - RTH v. Other Outcomes

The average difference in length of stay (in days) between strays with RTH outcomes and all other strays is shown in the table below – roughly 10 days for dogs and 8 for cats when looking at the average.

That means that every successful RTH saves 10 days of care on average at Rochester Animal Services, and field RTH would save an extra day or two on average for RTH from the shelter.

This could translate to pretty significant cost savings at scale – assuming a daily cost of care of 30$, if 100 more dogs were returned home in 2021, it would have saved Rochester Animal Services about $30,000 in costs of care. This is a fairly simple calculation, but it gets at the magnitude of the potential benefits.

Species Outcome Count Average_Length_Of_Stay
Cat Other Outcomes 1919 12.15
Cat RTO 70 4.47
Dog Other Outcomes 1599 12.70
Dog RTO 855 2.07

Supporting Data

Stray Intake and RTH By Found Location - Dogs

The following maps show stray intake and RTH rate by Census tracts to highlight geographical patterns. The first and second tab are similar to previous metrics; the third tab, RTH Gap, shows the number of strays who were not returned home per census tract.

The data in this section includes stray animals for which found addresses were present. There were 4478 strays after removing TNR animals. About a 120 had their found location as the shelter’s address and so were removed from mapping. 30 more had no house number or intersection which makes precise geocoding impossible, leaving 4317 animals overall, of which 2409 were dogs and 1877 were cats (31 others).

This was probably the most complete location data we have seen across HASS shelters – very few animals had to be removed for lack of specific address. Well done.

After this filtering, the data below (number of strays, rate of RTH, RTH gap) is shown for 2409 dogs of which 1102 were RTH. The next section shows the same maps for the cats.

Stray Intake

RTH Rate

This is fairly uniform around town, with a few exceptions, which is less common.

RTH Gap

This combines the other two tabs to highlight where most additional RTH potential exists - it shows the number of strays NOT returned to home in each area. As the RTH rate is fairly uniform, it looks roughly similar to the first map.

Top 10 Found Locations

Here’s a sneak peak into the top 10 found locations plotted above, to make sure they make sense to you.

Found.Location Count
202 CLAY AVE Rochester, NY 11
92 PARKWAY 14608 Rochester, NY 6
170 LEWIS ST 14605 Rochester, NY 5
141 Gibbs st 14605 Rochester, NY 4
18 Saxton st Rochester, NY 4
19 GOTHIC STREET Rochester, NY 4
206 AVENUE A Rochester, NY 4
21 LEAVENWORTH 14613 Rochester, NY 4
84 Cleveland st Rochester, NY 4
119 LEWIS STREET Rochester, NY 3

Stray Intake and RTH By Found Location - Cats

This is similar to the maps above, but for 1807 stray cats.

Stray Intake

The map looks somewhat similar from far out, but a few different areas stand out.

RTH Rate

Since cat RTH rate is pretty low across the city, it is also low throughout in this map.

RTH Gap

This is very similar to the stray map because of the low RTH occurrence for cats.

Top 10 Found Locations

Here’s a sneak peak into the top 10 found locations plotted above, to make sure they make sense to you.

Found.Location Count
750 JAY STREET Rochester, NY 14
404 CENTRAL PARK Rochester, NY 10
52 MADISON STREET Rochester, NY 10
164 SANFORD ST. Rochester, NY 8
18 FLOWER CITY Rochester, NY 8
21 Helena st 14605 Rochester, NY 8
25 ST CLAIR ST Rochester, NY 8
15 ENGLERT STREET Rochester, NY 7
196 Driving park Rochester, NY 7
346 MAGEE AVE 14613 Rochester, NY 7

Census Data

Map

This map shows different demographic information for the DC area. “Black” refers to the % of people who indicated their race as black or African American.

Strays x Povety

One example of using both the census data and shelter data is below – there is a very clear positive correlation between stray intakes (dogs+cats) and the % of people living under the 100% poverty line, such that there more animals coming in from areas with higher prevalence of poverty.

Extra Metrics

Other things we could show if we had the data for it:

  1. Distance traveled by lost dogs- We could add this upon getting an Intake with Results Extended report, which would have the outcome addresses for animals (all other personal information there can be filtered out by us or before sending).
  2. Microchip analysis - with the same extended report we could look at the chip number and issue date and identify the RTH rates for animals with/out chips and the areas in which animals come in with/out chips.
  3. Reason for RTH failure when owner is found (if that is a common occurrence).
  4. Number of public found reports and successful RTH by the public (if you are using the lost and found report module in petpoint).

Thanks for reading through, and we’re looking forward to talking through it and thinking about more ways to make this data useful for you.